Who owns the public record? Placeblogger, local access board lock horns

Submitted by Lisa Williams on Thu, 02/01/2007 - 00:11.

Barry Parr's fight for fair use of public meeting broadcasts got picked up by the San Mateo County Times:

MONTARA — Barry Parr's Web site got hundreds of extra hits when he uploaded a video clip of a tumultuous Half Moon Bay City Council meeting recorded from local cable-access channel MCTV last February. When MCTV told him to take it down, he knew he was in for a fight.

Parr complied, but contested MCTV's claim that the meeting footage they had was proprietary or subject to copyright. He said the meeting tapes were "public documents" that his Web site, Coastsider.com, has a right to republish for free. So far, he has not been able to convince the station's board of directors that he's right."

Barry Parr runs Coastsider, which covers Half Moon Bay. He says:

The public record should be owned by the public.

MCTV performs an important public service. Even after they made us take down our experimental streaming clip, we supported them in their struggle to get their share of franchise fees fromt the county. MCTV’s board and officers are good people who are making bad decisions that are not only against the public interest, but legally suspect.

It’s time for Coastsiders to demand more public service from their public access station. It’s time for Coastsiders to demand the rights to recordings that they are paying for with their tax dollars and fees to government agencies. We own the recordings of these meetings and not MCTV.

Local cable access broadcast of meetings is vital to H2otown, the placeblog I run for Watertown, MA. Like many people who operate a placeblog, it's not a full-time occupation for me. Local access means the difference between covering a meeting and linking to a story about the meeting in the local paper. Short clips of those meetings -- gotten using a video capture device -- are very popular features of the site.

Local access itself is under threat -- several bills currently in Congress would end the current requirements that cable providers contribute to local access, effectively shutting down most local access operations. In an era of shrinking newspapers, losing cable access may limit a community's ability to provide its own coverage if a local paper is no longer able to field a reporter for public meetings.

See Defending Local Access.

Lisa Williams's blog | add new comment
I submitted an op-ed to my
Submitted by Barry Parr on Tue, 02/06/2007 - 17:38.

I submitted an op-ed to my local weekly describing my challenges (described above) over access to the local public access station's recordings.

The editor of the paper said the (unwritten) column seemed like promotion for Coastsider to him, and that he didn't see what the fuss was about. No column for Barry. Every disinterested journalist I've described this problem to has been appalled, but my competition is more concerned about their commercial interests than they are about the public's access to recordings of their boards at work.

However, I have gotten some interest and offers of help from other quarters, and I'm still pursuing the access issue aggressively.

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Recordings are copyrighted
Submitted by Visitor on Sat, 02/03/2007 - 18:42.

If you take a photo of something public then your photo is copyrighted by you, automatically.

If you draw a picture of something public then your drawing is copyrighted by you, automatically.

If you take a write an essay about something public then your essay is copyrighted by you, automatically.

Just because the meeting was public does not mean that the recorder of the meeting is putting their recording in the public domain. Barry Parr is in the wrong. He should have made his own recording. Then he could publish that, although there are some other tricky spots along the way.

-Walter
SugarMtnFarm

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I agree. And Barry mischaracterized our conversation
Submitted by Visitor on Thu, 03/08/2007 - 19:09.

As managing editor of the Half Moon Bay Review, I guess I'm the competition Barry mentions in the previous comment.

Barry's right. I passed on his offer for an opinion piece. Because I think it's more about promoting his business than public access. Here is the complete text of my e-mail to him. You decide if he was fair:

Hey Barry,

Sorry for the delay. Deadline day ate my e-mailing time.

I’m gonna say no. And here is why: I’m happy to have your opinions on general Coastside stuff, but I’m not interested in promoting your commercial web site in our paper. And that is essentially how I see your battle with MCTV. Why don’t you post it to Talkabout? While I don’t know exactly what you would write till I see it, I would most likely allow that (Talkabout is the newspaper's message board).

Personally, I think it behooves MCTV to either stream the thing on a web site of their own or give it to you. Not that I think they are legally or morally bound to do so, rather I just think it would be the correct business decision for them. I think you are off-base with the “fair use” argument, the franchise fees and all the rest. Anyway, my opinion ... I got a million of them.

clay

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